Face-Slapping12 min read
“I knocked until the door opened — then everything broke”
ButterPicks13 views
I knocked until my knuckles hurt.
The woman inside the door moved like she owned the night. The light through the peephole showed a braid, a silk robe, a hand on a towel. My own hand trembled and I told myself to breathe.
“Who is it?” a voice called.
“It’s me,” I said. “Open the door.”
There was a long pause. Then the lock clicked and the door opened a hair.
“Faith?” she said, and then she saw me. Her face changed fast, like a light being switched from warm to cold.
The hallway smelled faintly of orange. I knew that smell. I had slept with it under my nose.
“Faith, what—” she started.
“Get out of the way,” I said.
She tried to close the door. I pushed it harder. Her eyes widened. She had to let me in.
The apartment was small, neat, staged. Roses lay on the coffee table. A scarf draped over a chair. A frame with a photo of Ivan and a man I had never seen. The bathroom door was shut.
“Where is he?” I asked.
She flinched. “Who?”
“You know who.”
She tried to speak and the room emptied of sound for a second. Then she went for the bathroom knob.
“Don’t,” I said.
She froze with her hand on the knob. Her face crumpled.
“He said he would come,” she whispered. “He—he said he’d come tonight. I waited.”
“You waited for a promise you bought,” I said. My voice was low. “How much money did he give you?”
She laughed like a small animal.
“It’s not like that,” she said. “He helped me. My mother—”
“Save it.” I stepped closer. “Do not lie to me.”
She stepped back and bumped against the sink. Tears started running down her cheeks. Her face was young and soft. She looked like my cousin did when she was twelve — full of trust.
“You don’t get to touch him,” I said. “Not like this.”
“Faith—” she cried.
“You don’t get to take him with money. You don’t get his nights and his words and then pretend you didn’t know how much you were worth.” I heard my voice break. “You told me you were my family.”
“I am your family,” she sobbed. “I didn’t choose—”
“I know.” I sounded like I was telling the truth. “You didn’t choose. He offered. You took. He promised. You believed.”
She put both hands over her mouth. “He promised he would help my mother. I told you. He promised—”
“And what did he promise you about me?” I asked. “Did he promise you I wouldn’t find out?”
She looked at the bathroom door. Then she ran, faster than I expected. She banged the bathroom door hard and locked it.
“Open the door!” I yelled. “Open the door right now!”
A muffled voice—his voice—came from inside.
“Faith, calm down.”
The handle rattled. A voice I knew better than my own skin said, “Who is it?”
I put my palm flat on the door and felt the heat from the other side. The air smelled like orange blossoms and cheap aftershave.
“I said open,” I said.
“I can explain,” he said. His voice was soft and careful. “Faith, let me—”
“You can explain every lie you told too,” I said. “You can explain the canceled birthdays. The calls you never take. The times I lay awake and tried to imagine another life for you. You can explain the soap on your collar and the scent on your shirt. You can explain how you looked at her when she sat next to you at my friend’s party.”
A long, slow silence. Then the lock clicked. Ivan opened the bathroom door and stepped out. He was smaller than he used to be in my head.
“Ivan,” I said. My voice was flat.
He did not move. The scarf around his neck slipped. His face was colorless. He was wearing the shirt I had bought him the summer before we married. The shirt still looked good on him. My stomach twisted.
“I didn’t expect you,” he said finally.
“You didn’t expect me?” I laughed then, a small laugh that hurt. “You didn’t expect me to walk through your lies?”
He looked at Collins — at the tear-streaked woman who tried to shrink further away on the couch — and his jaw jumped.
“Faith, it’s not like that—” he said.
“Not like that?” I wanted to scream. Instead I sat down on the couch, hands flat on my knees. “You brought her here, Ivan. You told her you would help her. You told her to keep up the lie. Her mother’s hospital bills, right? The loan you made. The transfer you told her would be quick. Did you tell her you loved her?” I asked quietly.
He looked at the floor.
“Yes.” He said it. It wasn’t loud, but it was the only real thing he had said in a long time.
“Say it again, Ivan. Say it like you mean it.” My throat felt raw. “Say it and mean it now that she’s here, now that you can’t take it back.”
He said nothing.
Collins was shaking. “Please—” she whispered. “Please don’t do this. I didn’t mean to—”
“You took my house,” I said. “You took my nights. You took his time and told him what he wanted to hear. And you are my blood.”
She looked up, defeated. “I had no one,” she said. “My mother—”
“You had your cousin. You had me when you were small. You had family.” The words were a jag to me, but I swallowed. “I had him.”
“I know.” She buried her face in her hands.
I stood. The room swam. I imagine I moved like someone watching themselves on a screen. I walked right up to the woman I had once taught to make tea, and I slapped her.
Hard.
My hand burned. Her face turned red and then white. Her mouth opened in a sound I had not heard before. The slap echoed in the small room.
“Don’t you dare cry for him,” I said. My voice was cold. “Do not make me pity you.”
People in the hall heard the sound. Voices popped through the door frame. Footsteps. A neighbor’s voice, then another.
“Holy—what is that?”
A small crowd gathered in the corridor. Someone asked if everything was okay.
Ivan looked at me like I had taken his last coin and eaten it. “Faith,” he whispered. “This is not—”
“She is my cousin,” I snapped. “She got your help with money. She slept in the bed you gave her. She smiled with your arm around her. She told me you’d help her mother. She told me to trust her. She told me to keep a secret.”
She started to cry, real now. I hated her. I pitied her. I hated myself for it.
“You’re a liar,” I told Ivan. “You lied to me about work trips. You lied about being late. You lied about being tired. You lied about everything I asked you. And you lied to her.”
He tried to step forward, to say something that might pull a string loose in this mess.
“You will leave,” I said. “You will leave this apartment now. You will walk out with her or by yourself. You will come with me to the place where we signed our names to each other. You will tell the people who love you the truth. You will not pretend this never happened.”
His face went pale. “Faith—” he began.
“You will do it now,” I ordered.
He closed his mouth, his shoulders slumping. He looked like a tired soldier.
“I can’t lose everything,” he said.
“You already lost the only thing that was mine,” I said. “You lost my trust.”
He made a face like someone pulling out a splinter. For a terrible second I thought he would fall. Instead, he walked out of the bathroom, bright light catching in his hair. He looked like a man who had been carved out of someone else’s law.
“Call my lawyer,” Ivan said, voice raw. “Do what you want.”
He moved like he was in a dream, taking her coat and pressing it into her hands, as if to say, here, take something that looks like my warmth.
Outside the door, voices had become louder. People had stopped at the corridor, phones out, watching. A neighbor whispered, “Who are they? Is that Ivan Solovyov?”
“Yes,” someone hissed. “That’s him. The Ivan.”
I had a plan. I always had a plan even when I let it go. I stepped toward Collins, near enough to see the bruise beneath her sleeve.
“You took his money,” I said. “Show me the bank messages. Show me the transfers.”
She fumbled with her phone. Her hands shook like leaves. The meter on her screen showed messages. They were there: transfers, short notes, small jokes. The words I had seen in so many messages with Ivan between his shiny life and our small home.
People in the corridor leaned in.
“You see?” I said to them. “He paid her. He arranged her. He told her to keep my mouth shut. He said it was for the bills.”
Ivan’s face was dead now. He stood like a man who had been unmasked.
A woman from the hall whispered, “I can make a call. I know someone at the paper.”
“No,” I told her. “Not yet.”
I had to do this myself.
I opened Collins’ message thread and read aloud the names and amounts. People’s eyes flicked like birds. Murmurs rippled through the small crowd. The neighbor who said she knew the paper was already on the phone.
“Call him again,” I told Ivan.
He did not answer. Collins wiped her face with the back of her hand.
“This is wrong,” she said. “I never thought—”
“You were wrong,” I said. “And you chose wrong.”
She crumpled into a ball on the couch and started to sob in a way that echoed through the building. I wanted to walk away. I wanted to sit next to her and hold her. I wanted her to be young and clean and not wrecked by needs. But I did not. Not then.
Footsteps rushed. A man from downstairs stepped into the doorway. It was Emery Berg—my friend from school—who had come because he had heard murmurs at the club. He looked from me to Ivan and then at Collins.
“You should leave,” he said to Ivan quietly. “Now.”
Ivan looked at him. Then he looked at me. Then he left. He walked down the stairs without saying goodbye. He did not stop to look at any of us. He walked away like a man carrying a weight that had suddenly doubled.
The door closed. The hallway exhaled.
“Faith,” Collins whispered. “I’m sorry.”
“You took my life,” I said.
She sobbed. I turned and left the apartment. I walked through the small crowd. People stared. Phones darted into pockets. Someone called a cab. Ivan’s steps away from us were quick and then slow. I watched him go.
Back at home, my mother held me in the doorway with both hands on my shoulders.
“What happened?” she asked.
“He was with her,” I said. It was a statement, not a question.
My mother’s face folded in a way that made her look very old.
“You must go to the lawyer,” she said. “You must do it now.”
I did. I called my lawyer and we met in a small conference room. The man’s name was Brock Mayer. He said the words I needed to hear like they were coins.
“You can file for separation. You can freeze certain accounts. You can ask for a public apology. And you can demand a financial settlement,” he said.
“What about the company?” I asked. “What about his father? What about the reputation?”
Brock shrugged. “People care more about money than love. We can make them care about both if you want it that way.”
I wanted him to suffer. I wanted him to feel the light go out of everything. But I also wanted to be clean of this poison. I wanted to be someone who could walk into her new life without dragging old lies behind her.
“I don’t want him to lose everything,” I said quietly. “I want him to pay for what he did.”
Brock nodded. “We will make a plan.”
The press smelled blood. A week later, the story was on every feed. Headlines were careful at first. Gossip found words. People are always eager to be first to tell you about someone else’s fall. Ivan’s name was there, and my name too. Collins’ name trailed like smoke. The company called a press meeting the next day.
He stood there in a suit that didn’t make him look brave. His father sat in a corner and watched like a judge. My husband avoided my eyes. The cameras were loud—like waves.
“What do you have to say?” a reporter asked.
He swallowed.
“I am sorry,” he said. It was thin. “I made a mistake.”
“Did you pay Collins?” another reporter asked.
He nodded.
“And did you know about the transfers?” another voice.
He nodded again.
“And did you love her?”
He looked at me, then at the floor. “Yes,” he whispered.
The press had already written what they wanted. Social feeds erupted. Some people blamed me for making it public. Others wanted him out of the business. Investors called. A board member resigned that very afternoon. The company lost a contract. People kept asking if this would be the end.
In the middle of it, my mother visited. She sat with me while I packed and unpacked the same boxes a dozen times. She said she wished she could take my pain away. She said, “You will be more than this, Faith. You will be free.”
The night the board met to discuss Ivan, my phone lit up with a message from him.
“Please,” he wrote. “I will lose everything. Please don’t let them destroy me.” There was a string of words after—pleas, apologies, a tiny promise like an ember.
I typed back, slow. “You lost me,” I wrote. “You lost me before this.”
He did not reply.
My mother had always wanted to see me safe. She gave me an envelope and a look that said she had seen the world and made a choice.
“This is for the studio,” she said. “Start again.”
I stared at the money inside. My heart leapt an old soft song. Maybe I would open a small place where light came in and paint hung on the wall. I would sell small pieces. I would teach children to mix colors. I would remember the orange scent but not need it.
I went to the family dinner the night Ivan’s position at the company was weakened. His mother, Barbara Black, looked at me with something that tried to be triumph but tasted like fear. She called me into the hallway and said, “You broke my son’s name.”
“You pushed him into truth,” I answered.
She sneered. “You always played the fool.”
“Was I a fool?” I asked.
“Look what you did,” she said. “You tore the family.”
I shrugged. “I tore the lie.”
At the board meeting, faces were colder than winter. A few men in suits talked about numbers. A woman in a silk dress asked about the client we lost. Ivan’s brother, West Blair, sat with his arm folded like an oath. He watched his brother with eyes that had always measured him—then calculated a future.
When Ivan left the room, the company breathed like a thing without a heart. He went home and packed a small bag. He left a note on the kitchen table: “I am sorry. I will come back when I can be better.”
I read the note with my gloves on. My hands shook, and I put the note in the pocket of my coat.
At night, I woke to a small sound at the door. He stood there, wet from the rain. He had left his apartment, his car, his life—he had come back for nothing but a chance.
“Faith,” he said.
“You came back for the lie,” I said. “You came back because the world cut you loose and you had nowhere.”
“I was lost,” he said. “I made a terrible mistake.”
“You traded our life for a mess of someone else’s need,” I said. “You did not see the cost.”
“I did now.” He reached for me. I took no step.
He fell to his knees. He looked like a man asking for a mercy he had not deserved.
“Get up,” I said.
He looked like he would, then he did not. He sat there like a man who finally understood that some doors cannot be unbanged.
“I can leave,” he said. “I can go. I will go. If that’s what you want.”
“You can go,” I said. “And you can tell them everything. Or you can stay and let me watch you fade in front of me. Choice is yours.”
He stayed a long time on his knees. Outside, the city moved. Cars hummed. Neighbors called to each other. The world kept living.
I began to rebuild. The studio was small and bright. I painted in the mornings. My hands learned to make clean lines where the past had been messy. I began to teach on Saturdays. Children ran through colors and knocked paint onto their shoes and I laughed like something in me had begun to heal.
Sometimes, a client would ask me about the story in the papers. I would smile and say, “I only painted while the world turned.” It was true.
Ivan tried to come to me several times. He sent messages of apology every month. He arrived at the studio twice and waited in the rain. I let him stand there. I gave him water once. We spoke three words. He asked if we could see a counselor. I said no.
“Why?” he asked.
“Because the hurt came with your hands,” I said. “You can’t fix it with words.”
He nodded. “Then what do you want?”
“Run the company clean,” I said. “Fix what you broke.” It sounded strange as it left my mouth. I did not mean money. I meant truth. I meant get better.
He did some of it. He resigned from the board of the family company and took a job overseas in a small firm. The press wrote that he had vanished to think. Investors stopped whispering about him. He called once to tell me his mother was ill. I said I would visit. I did not go.
The true face-slap came months later, not in a hallway but in a meeting room. Collins had gone back to school. She had nothing now but footnotes in a story she had helped to write. She came to the studio once and offered me the phone with the messages. She wanted to apologize again. I listened. She cried.
“The night you found us,” she said, “I thought I had a future.”
“You had a choice,” I said. “You made it.”
She lowered her head. “I know.”
I did not hit her again. I would not hand out more violence. I had given the slap and it had not fixed anything but my rage. What fixed things was quiet. What fixed things was making the small place where I could breathe.
At the end, I stood at the studio window. The sun hit the orange soap beneath my sink like a small coin of light. I kept it on a saucer. I smelled it sometimes, a private memory. It did not burn me. It reminded me.
One morning I opened the gallery for our small show. Friends came. My mother came and cried. Emery came and brought a bottle of plain wine. Brock came because he wanted to see me smile. Ivan’s father sent a note: “Best wishes.” He did not come.
At the closing, while people chatted, I closed the door for a second. Ivan was on the street outside in a small, dark coat. He stood and waited to see if I would look. He lifted his phone when he saw me and sent a message. I saw it on the screen as I walked by.
“Faith,” it said. “I am sorry. I am trying.”
I paused. My heart beat fast. For a second I wanted to step outside and let a life of old wrongs become new bargaining. Instead, I turned the key in the studio door and locked it.
Inside, under the glass on the counter, I wrote my own note: “This is mine now.”
People saw our show and asked questions. They asked if we had come through pain. I shrugged. Pain did not make a good story. The truth was simpler: I had been brave enough to knock on a door and then brave enough to walk away.
A week later, at breakfast, my mother set two cups down. I looked at her.
“Did you ever think you would be without him?” she asked.
“For a while I thought I would be nothing without him,” I said. “Now I know I am someone even if I never have a husband again.”
She smiled. “Good. Then make sure you keep your doors open for the right people.”
I went to the window and watched the street. A man walked by, not looking twice. My phone buzzed once with a message from Collins: “I am sorry, truly. I will fix my life.”
I put the phone down. I had fixed mine.
That night, I took the small orange soap and set it on my desk beside a new sketch. I breathed in the scent, soft and familiar, and I did not burn.
I hung a small new piece on the studio wall. It was a painting of a closed door with light falling through its edge. On the frame I wrote, in small neat letters, one sentence for myself:
“Knock when you need to. Leave when you must. Keep the light.”
The End
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